


The Cost Is Final

by UnregisteredCookie



Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Bad Decisions, Bad Parenting, But Given The Circumstances Can You Blame Him, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Child Neglect, Denial of Feelings, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Other, Overthinking, Parent-Child Relationship, Parenthood, Pre-Canon, Sacrifice, The Pale King is a Bad Parent (Hollow Knight)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-21
Updated: 2020-05-21
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:02:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24306376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnregisteredCookie/pseuds/UnregisteredCookie
Summary: A much less literal take on the purpose behind buzzsaws living within the White Palace lies within the aggressively repressed memories of a King struggling to face off against a fearsome blight. Won't you take a look?Even the Pale King couldn't ignore the signs.
Relationships: Grimm & The Pale King (Hollow Knight), The Hollow Knight | Pure Vessel & The Pale King, The Pale King/White Lady (Hollow Knight)
Comments: 20
Kudos: 69





	The Cost Is Final

"You could make like me."

The Pale King lifted his weary head at that, eyes narrowed surreptitiously at his guest. The Nightmare King avoided his gaze, seeming to prefer instead the view from the window, glistening and pallid. A glass of wine was being nursed in his hand, rocked back and forth to a listless beat. He reclined in his seat with a relaxed posture, legs draped over the arm of his chair, his back nestled against a corner. It was impossible not to see him, a sore, dark thumb that laxly stood out among the pure whiteness.

"What do you mean?"

The Nightmare King blinked and finally turned his head to face him, scarlet eyes glistening with muted curiosity. How frustrated his presence made the Pale King by the day, the God having been summoned for assistance against his soul sibling yet offering almost nothing other than an annoying presence and snide comments and words. Understandable though it was, the Pale King truly wished that the God would provide some sustained help against this debilitating matter, grant him the assurance that his Troupe would leave his lands and grant Hallownest its safety. Presently, the God opened his mouth, and what the loitering Higher Being spoke offered with it a rare form of intimate, half-hidden knowledge.

"The Nightmare Heart slumbers within me," he said, rolling his glass a few times, the wine teetering dangerously close to the edge. "It uses me as a vessel, just as it used my ancestors as its vessels. As it will use my spawn to sustain itself, a power bred by the will of Wyrm and will. You could probably seal her away similarly, is what I'm saying."

The Nightmare God raised his glass, taking a few contemplative sips, before setting it down off-handedly on the table. "You could make like me."

The Pale King stared at this fallen God, relying on a mortal vessel, absorbing the words he spoke, rolling them over on his tongue.

"Make like you," he echoed. 

Grimm nodded.

"Like me."

* * *

From the start, the plan was flawed.

He knew it almost instantly, when the first and last Vessel rose from the depths of the Abyss, when he sealed away the thousands that remained, unable to bear facing the shame and refuse of his regret. He knew when he looked back at the Pure Vessel, pausing as it stared back at its birthplace behind it, before it turned and followed after his light.

He knew before his wife had requested to raise it as a child, a request he couldn't bring himself to refuse. How lovingly she treated it, this voiceless, empty, hollow shell that felt nothing, _thought_ nothing, _wanted nothing_.

_How perfect it would be if this were all true._

He knew the plan was flawed from the moment the execution was put into motion.

 _Too late,_ he told himself, when he thought of his thousands of dead children, locked away and hidden beneath the depths of where his palace stood. It was something to be forgotten, something best locked away--yet still it haunted his footsteps like a plague, lurked within the depths of his mind and carried with it the burden of his shame. His Queen felt it, too--his beautiful Root: He could see it in her eyes when she looked at it, looked at _him_ , felt it in the ever-growing distance between their hearts though their shells strayed no farther apart.

The infection, meanwhile, showed no pause. The minds of his people were at constant risk of being overtaken by the Radiance's unifying light, stripping their will from the fabric of their being--what a cruel way to live, how lifeless and lonely! Is life truly life if stripped of free will? How quickly it was spreading across his kingdom, a plague of the mind to her influence that he could not stop. If he could, it would have been so, so easy to liberate them.

He'd tried. He'd tried so, so hard to liberate his people of their light. He'd tried encouraging the channeling of soul before their own fetid fantasies made themselves clear. He'd tried bargaining, scarcely escaping with a sane mind--he'd tried killing off the infected to prevent it from spreading, only to find it wasn't a plague of the body but a plague of the mind.

Horrified though he was, he tried.

The people were starving.

He was so tired.

The Queen spoke to him. "My Wyrm," she said, "I love you, and for all of time, I always will. But I can't bring myself to stay after our child gets sealed away."

"I know."

"My dear," she continued, picking him up in her arms, stable and bathed with light and creaking with the power of the kindly earth, "you know that our child is not empty, do you not?"

Her eyes searched his, grasping for his understanding, desperate and pleading and it made him feel ill.

 _I know,_ he wanted to say, but to willingly admit it would be admitting his failure. His failure to his people, his failure to the Dreamers, to the Pure Vessel, toward _his children_ \--

It was a shame he couldn't bring himself to face. He didn't know if he ever could. If he'd ever get the chance to.

So he said nothing.

* * *

The Pale King looked down at it.

From their shared perch, they could see the entirety of the White Palace in all its glory--it was one of the highest points of the palace, this balcony, a favorite of his. But today he didn't look down on the knights as they trained, he didn't watch the Kingsmold patrolling the courtyard and the palace walls. Today, he stared down at the placid face of his child, unmoving, unshifting, lending no indication to whatever emotions it might or might not be feeling. It'd come up to him as he stared across the palace grounds, taken its spot by his side, and watched the horizon of the palace spires alongside him. To the King's mind, it almost seemed like it was curious what he was seeing, but to think such a thing was--

It took him a few stiff minutes. The Pale King continued to stare, and the Vessel did so as well, unmoving and ignorant to its father's plight. Eventually, he couldn't bring himself to refuse his heart anymore. He turned to stare at it in silence, struggling to see anything, analyzing its mask, searching for any indication to emotion that it might provide. Some evidence to prove his assumptions--no, his _knowing._

But the mask was unchanging, and it didn't look up at him.

"I know you're not hollow," he murmured anyway.

The Pure Vessel turned its head and looked up at him. Was it surprised? Was it offended? Was it truly empty? The Pale King didn't know for certain, but he felt he knew from watching it train, from hearing the accounts of how it's improved and watching it as it lived. Such a vessel filled with this breed of emptiness, surely, couldn't be hollow.

An empty glass, after all, isn't really empty. An empty glass is filled with air, oxygen and molecules, and is never truly empty unless set in an airless vacuum. And any semblance to a vacuum that the Vessel might have had was shattered as soon as his blood was melded into the void.

None of them were empty. Not fully, at least.

He looked away from the Pure Vessel at length, staring across the glowing architecture he so admired but unable to bring himself to truly take it in. How insurmountably difficult this conversation was proving to be. How could he manage these words, words that he couldn't even bring himself to speak before his Root, his love who was planning to leave for her gardens after the Pure Vessel became sealed and locked away?

Words fumbled in his throat, vying for dominance on his tongue, but of all the bugs in Hallownest--he felt that this young one, his offspring deserved the truth. Impossible though it may be, it deserved to know the magnitude of his gratefulness, for it grasping at the same straws that he had been, for trying to become a true hollowness that it just couldn't be.

(It settled heavy on his stomach, curled in his chest, and wept.)

"I know that you are trying to be," he said. "And maybe that's the best that we have."

His child didn't respond--it had no voice to speak. That, at least, was true. It instead looked away, too, staring into the distance, following its father's gaze.

He reached out tentatively, setting his hand on the Vessel's head. It jolted, stiffened, quickly relaxed.

It was all that the Pale King needed.

From the very start, the plan was flawed, doomed to only postpone the inevitable.

But it was the only plan that they had left, and they'd come too far now--given up far too much--to pull back to the drawing board. They had to see it through. They had to try.

If they went back on this plan now, then what was it all for?

_There was no time to make another one._

He moved his hand away from the child, focused his sights on what was forward, and buried this memory in the depths of his regret, repressing it as best he could. The path of pain was long, and it led him here, and with this--this final confirmation--this is where it would end.

If the ends justify the means, then there was no cost too great to preserve Hallownest's legacy.

All that he could do now was forget--to shove this horrible series of mistakes into the back of his mind, hidden and painful and raw, cutting his heart like the blades of thousands of live buzzsaws. The evidence of his remorse--with any luck--would remain hidden under lock and key for many, many years--perhaps forever, even. And once the Pure Vessel was truly sealed away itself, perhaps even _that_ could grant him some comfort.

_Or maybe it would give him too much silence to think on._

All that he could do now was forget the evidence of a greater mind.

All he could do now was pretend that this was not all in vain.

**Author's Note:**

> I was going to add on a final part detailing the aftermath, but eventually decided: 'Eh. I don't feel like it.' So, here you go. Hope you enjoyed it, you lovely nerds.
> 
> An alternative take to why there are buzzsaws in the White Palace:
> 
> Place is a dream world. What if they aren't really grounded in reality? What if the real White Palace didn't have any buzzsaws? I don't know about you, but buzzsaws seem like a pretty bad workplace hazard.
> 
> I like to imagine that the entirety of the White Palace's dream world is represented best by metaphor--with the buzzsaws and thorns and spikes being a dreamlike manifestation of the Pale King's efforts to repress everything and keep on going on. After all, it's through the Path of Pain that we see them share a moment, the hardest platforming section in the entire game. And it's at the end of the normal White Palace that we see the final reminder:
> 
> The King failed. After all of that, he failed. How much denial do you think he had to have for his final thoughts to continue to be 'No cost too great'? You have to be desperate, I think. Pretty fucking desperate.
> 
> Anyway. Those were my thoughts on the Path of Pain and the White Palace. Thank you for coming to my TED talk. Hope you enjoyed.


End file.
